The Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem notes with dismay that it has been a full year since it submitted its second petition to the Israeli Supreme Court for free and independent access to Gaza. Regrettably, there still is no resolution.

Despite the urgency, the court has repeatedly agreed to the government’s request for delays and postponed one hearing after another.

Meanwhile, our colleagues in Gaza, including members of this association, have had their lives shattered. Palestinian journalists have been directly targeted. Places where they habitually gathered have been bombed. At least 200 of them have been killed by Israeli fire, more than in any other conflict in modern history. 

Despite all of these dangers, they continue to inform the world while facing not only violence, but also hunger and repeated displacement.

Israeli leaders and the military have also gone to extreme lengths to discredit the work of our Palestinian colleagues, and to a great extent, the work of the foreign press as a whole. This campaign of delegitimization has created and amplified hazardous working conditions for journalists, leading to the normalization of incitement, harassment nd attacks on foreign press both from Israeli civilians and members of Israel’s security forces.

Journalism is not a crime. Israel must stop killing journalists in Gaza and give the foreign press free and independent access to the territory. This continued and institutionalized delay in the process is a mark of shame on Israel and its allies, who have too often chosen not to speak up in defense of basic press freedoms.

Statement attributed to the board of The Foreign Press Association